12+ Fun Texting Games to Play With Your Friends

Believe it or not, there are many people out there who still do not have smartphones. Sometimes you might find yourself in a predicament where you are really bored, but the only friends who are available are the ones who don’t own smartphones. This is where texting games come into play. The most basic texting games don’t require any phones with special features and can actually be quite fun.

There are other times when you want to play games with your friends who do own smartphones. This is when chat apps like WhatsApp come in handy. WhatsApp is a chat app that allows for you to do a multitude of things with your friends. All you need is an Internet connection and you are ready to use WhatsApp. You can use WhatsApp instead of your basic SMS to do things like send and receive messages. You can also make phone calls, and send photos and videos via the WhatsApp.

For those of you who don’t have smartphones, you can continue to play texting games using your phone without any special apps or you can consider getting WhatsApp for PC (or other chatting apps such as WeChat). The benefit of downloading a chatting app to your personal computer is that then your friends who have smartphones can use their apps to play games with you.

If you would like more information on downloading WhatsApp, you can find it at the Google Play Store:

Again, you do not need to have these chatting apps in order to play texting games, but they are quite helpful for playing texting games. Here are 13 of the best texting games that people are playing these days:

Story Builder

One of the best texting games you can play is called Story Builder. Basically, one person starts the game with a phrase or a sentence. The next person then uses that to construct another phrase or sentence. This continues on and on until each player has contributed, and they have collectively built a really creative and imaginative story amongst the group.

Example: The first person starts with the line “Once upon a time…” Then the next person adds something like “there was an old woman who lived on a dirt road.” The next person then continues the trend until there is a full-blown story as a result.

Though this game is already pretty interesting, one of the things you can do to make it more difficult is to add confinements or rules. Some suggestions are to offer up a word count. Any one person cannot add any more than four words. Or you can say that you cannot use certain words. Do whatever you need to do to get all of your creative juices flowing.

I Spy

Everyone remembers playing this game on a long road trip with other passengers in the car. You look outside the window and locate something of a particular color. Then the other passengers have to guess what you found.

What you may not know is that there is a way to play this on your phone. You can do this by sending pictures and/or clues to your friends. First of all, you have to tell your friend what your current location is, and then you give them the first letter of the object you are seeing. They then have to guess what you are seeing.

The other way you can play this is to send them a picture of your location, and then ask them to guess what the answer is based off of the picture.

20 Questions

This is another game that you can probably recall playing in real life at one point. It’s a very simple game and can be translated very easily to texting.

The first thing you have to do is to think of an object or person. Once you have done that, your friends will then ask you questions over text messaging. All you have to do then is answer them honestly with a “yes” or a “no”. Once the entire group has reached 20 questions asked, they must guess what the answer is. If they get it right, they win.

You can surely make things difficult or easy depending on what object or person you choose. If you wish to keep the game simple for those who may not have played it, stick with particular categories or genres. If you would like to make it more difficult, pick anything.

Guess the Character

Guess the character is a fairly simple game. You need to choose a character and then give your friends hints so they can guess who you are. There doesn’t appear to be any limits to the amount of questions asked. This is really just an easier version of 20 questions.

Abbreviations

This game is usually played within the context of an already happening text message conversation with one other person. Basically, it involves you giving an abbreviation instead of using a whole word. Your friend is then supposed to guess what you are saying.

Example: Your friend asks you what you are doing. You then respond with something like, “I am GTTM.”

It is your friends’ job to decipher what you mean by “GTTM”. He or she will then begin to guess. You can offer up clues to make it easier or just let him or her figure it out on his or her own. He wins the game when he figures out that you meant, “going to the market”.

Would You Rather?

Would You Rather? is another game that you have probably found yourself to be playing at some point in real life. It is a game that often reveals a persons’ true nature as well as his or her personality. It basically starts with one person asking “would you rather…”. This is followed by two contrasting scenarios. The two scenarios can be as different as you want them to be, but they should hold the same weight. Do not ask something like, “would you rather eat a pizza or go on a cruise?” The best “would you rather” situations are ones that are either equally desirable or equally loathsome.

Example: Would you rather win a million dollars or marry the girl of your dreams?

Kiss, Marry, Kill

To begin this game, you must give your friends a list of three names. They have to be either celebrities or people you all know in real life. Your friends then have to say which of the people they would kiss, which they would marry, and which they would kill. To make the game even more interesting, you can use certain names that you know people will be uncomfortable with.

Remember to not take anything in this game too seriously. All of this should be done lightheartedly. It’s all just fun and games, of course.

Silly Pictures

This is a really fun game. Unfortunately, in order to play it, you will need a phone with the ability to take and send pictures over the Internet.

Basically, all you have to do is send silly pictures to your friends. Then, your friends send pictures back to you in return. Before long, all of your phones will be overloaded with silly pictures. You can limit this to certain genres of pictures or you can send anything you think will invoke a laugh.

And don’t forget to send crazy memes when your friends ask questions.

What If

If you’ve ever had one of those “what if” scenarios pop into your head at random times, then you know what this game is all about. You’re in the shower, and you suddenly ask yourself, “what if I had never taken that job?” or “What if I had married that girl?”

This game takes those thoughts and makes them into a really fun, and possibly funny, game. The way it works is that you simply text your friends and ask them “what if…” All you have to do after that is wait for their answers. With this game, there are, of course, no right or wrong answers. But you might discover how funny your friends are when they give you their solutions.

Simple Quiz

This may possibly be one of the best texting games out there. The execution is pretty basic, but, depending on what question you ask, the game could go on for a long time.

Basically, you ask a question, and then you wait for the correct answer from any of your friends who are playing the game. If you don’t want anyone searching on the internet, simply tell them. If, however, you don’t trust them, you could ask something like a mathematical question—the answer to which they are not likely to find on the web.

The Name Game

This game is apparently pretty popular in schools. It is a game primarily based on spelling. Basically, you choose a category and then choose a particular word within that category. Your friend must then choose another word within that same category that starts with the last letter of the word you chose.

Example: You say “cable”. Your friend says “electronic”. You say “connection”. And the game continues on just like this.

Never Have I Ever

This is actually usually played as a drinking game. But, for the purposes of this article, this is how you can play it over text messaging.

You can add as many rules as you like for this game. But one thing you must do is to set the number of points each person starts out with.

The first player then makes a statement about something he or she has never done before. The other player loses a point every time his experiences go against what his opponent says.

Example: You might start off by saying, “I have never gone dancing.” If the other person has gone dancing before, they then lose a point. After that, it is their turn to make a statement about something they have never done before. The game continues until one player loses all of his or her points.

Breakdown

This game is all about words. Basically, you text a word to your friends, and then they get to break that word apart. In other words, you present a word to your friends, and they have a certain allotted amount of time to come up with a list of other words using only those letters found in the original word.

You can put whatever rules you want in place such as the longer the word the more the points. And, keep in mind; in general the game is easier for your friends if you provide them with a long word to begin with. Whoever has the most points at the end of the game (you must also determine how many rounds you wish to play) wins.

This is just a small sampling of the many text-messaging games that are out there. If you would like to find out about more, a simple Google search will help with that. And, again, keep in mind that you can play most of these games without the help of a smartphone, but having a smartphone, with the apps that they have to offer, will make playing these games much more entertaining.